Card Game Chaos

Shuffle Up Some Good Times

Milton Bradley, Parker Bros. and Whitman among other companies made various card games for children. Some of the games have been around since the 30s or longer. Some of my favorites were...

Old Maid was a game where you collected cards and tried to discard pairs until you where out of cards. Whoever was left with the Old Maid that didn't have a match was the loser.

Go Fish! Another pairing game where you ask your opponent for a specific card if you already are holding one like it. If the other kid doesn't have one he yells go fish and you have to draw.

Crazy Eights and Hearts were two more of the more popular card games.

War! Try to gain all of the cards by trumping your opponent with a tougher character. The spy could kill the general but would get wiped out by anything else.

MAD card game 1979 be the first to get rid of all of your Alfred E. Newman cards and sabotage your opponents using which way cards to suddenly switch directions of play, draw one you varmit card, etc.

There were four card suits with each getting progressively more chaotic with each higher card value and a which way card for each color.

Yellow Astronaut Suit drifting towards the sun.

Red Union Suit unraveling underwear until Alfred is in the buff.

Green Leisure Suit with more and more food thrown at Alfred.

Blue Suit of Armor falling to pieces.

Sabotage cards Wild! & Wooly! and Exchange hands.

Draw One and a switch directions Which Way card.

Give two and my favorite card the Self-Defense card What Me Worry? You Worry! that can be played if someone tries to sabotage you with a card you karate chop the effects right back at them.

Wild pick any color suit and Joker that you use to win the game if you have less than three cards.

Mille Bornes 1954 a race car game with each player trying to rack up the most mileage first. Mille Bornes means 1000 mile stones in French.

Roll out with a green light to begin or throw down the red light to stop a speedy opponent.

Lay on the speed with these cards up to 200 kilometers an hour! Each time the family got together to play this my aunt would provide the sound effects. Vrooooom! Screeeech ! Wooosh ! Crashhh!

Grind your opponents to a halt with a Hazard card! Get yourself back on the road with a remedy card.

Be invincible to certain hazards with the specialty cards.

Here are the original cards.

Pit from 1903 is a commodities trading game that can get pretty crazy with each seller yelling out how many cards they have to trade with potential buyers. Try to corner the market on one commodity collecting all 9 of that type of cards and ring the bell to win. Wheat, Corn, Barley, Coffee, Sugar, Oats, Soybeans and Oranges make up the commodities. Older versions had Rye, Hay and Flax cards. Avoid the bear market (if you get stuck with this at the end you lose 20 points), use the bull market to your advantage as a wild card but if you don't finish it is also minus 20 points if left in your hand. The 70s and 80s versions had a bell, later versions have a slap corner mat probably because of the potential for injury as multiple enthusiastic players slam the bell at once impaling the bottom player's hand. Here is the version I remember and the original cards.

Phase 10 1982 be the first to complete all ten phases collecting colors, runs, pairs, etc.

Rook around since 1906, bid on the yellow, black, red and green suits to take tricks. The rook card trumps all. Here are various versions plus the original.

Skip-bo 1967 you have a stock pile of cards that need to be discarded in numerical order on shared build piles. Skip-bo cards are wild.

Hand and Foot 1982 is a canasta type game for teams taking tricks with a set of cards in their hand and a second set that is picked up when the hand is gone (the foot). My mother-in-law plays it all the time with five decks of playing cards.

Dukes of Hazzard 1981 meld out with three good guys or three lawmen. Use a Road Block to reverse directions and go again. Speed Trap the next player loses a turn. Parking Ticket the next player draws 2 and can't meld or discard. Hazzard County Clout throws the speed trap and parking ticket effects back on the person who played it. Hogg Wild is a draw four plus they cannot meld or discard.

Annie Leapin' Lizards, they even made a Annie card game in 1982. First to spell Annie wins.

Ewoks Say Cheese 1984 cards reveal pieces of the puzzle but try to hold onto the final piece.

Ewoks Favorite Five 1984 match all 5 of a color from your opponent.

Kermit the Frog 1980 play all of your Kermit the Frog acts cards on your opponent's piles to win.

Miss Piggy 1980 collect Ms. Piggy faces to play on suits to win.

The Great Muppet Caper 1981 play out the parts of the movie with story cards or steal your buddies puzzle cards with a thief.

Mr.T 1983 see who is the toughest with Mr. T and his friends from his animated T.V. show.

HE-MAN and the Masters of the Universe 1983 play war with your favorite Heroic Warriors and Evil Henchmen.

Transformers 1985 play The Transformers Truth Game by bluffing your opponent or telling the truth, Robot Battle war with your favorite Decepticons and Autobots, The Transformers Brainpower memory game and The Transformers Shout finding doubles.

Gremlins 1984 help Billy get to five locations in Kingston Falls and warn people on the way. Check off each place with Gizmo or run away from Stripe.

Gremlins 1984 avoid getting gremlins at all costs the player with the fewest gremlins at the end wins.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 1982 get all of the adventure cards to win, avoid the danger cards.

Dark Crystal 1982 match characters and collect points for your color in a race against the suns. Get pieces of the Dark Crystal before the great conjunction.

Return of the Jedi Play for Power 1983 I loved these cards with five games to play from.
Alien Adventure: trade then battle your aliens in the first to collect 32 cards.
Creature Concentration: memory match game.
Super Solitaire: Put all the cards in order if you can.
Jedi Apprentice: war for beginners.
Jedi Master: advanced war for up to four player with traps, multi-battles, colors and number values, and the force.

Pac-Man 1982 a fun way to add, subtract and multiply your power points with Pac-Man and the ghosts. First to 100 points wins.

Q*Bert 1983 build your Q*Bert a pyramid with cards and sabotage your opponent's progress by sending snakes and monsters over to their pyramid.

Donkey Kong 1983 capture Donkey Kong by building a tower and moving your Mario up to reach him but watch out for barrels and fireballs.

Popeye 1983 get matches to collect love from Olive Oyl watch out for Brutus and the Old Hag.

Water Works 1972 this fantastic game is so simple yet fun. Build a pipe line from valve to spout to connect the water supply before your opponents do. Your opponents will try to crack your lead pipes. Fix your leaks with wrenches and protect against future attacks with brass pipes.

UNO 1971 match cards in your hand by number or color to the discard pile on your turn to get rid of them as fast as you can. When you get down to one yell UNO! If you forget or someone is faster in calling it out you have to draw two cards. Use the reverse to switch directions of game play, skip to force a player to lose a turn and force player to draw additional cards. I always tried to save the wild cards (pick a color) for last for a quick win.

Where's the Beef? 1984 score the most during each of the three rounds by finding the beef. Based on the memorable slogan from Wendy's restaurants where this little old lady shouts at the competitors while eating their hamburgers demanding to know where the beef is. Wendy's claimed by making patties square you got more beef in the corners. My favorite commercial was the first with the two other old ladies complaining about the burger then Clara Peller yelling, "Where's the Beef?" in later commercials she even called these burger joint owners and yelled it over the phone with humorous results. There was also a board game.

The majority of the photos in this article come from www.boardgamegeek.com an awesome nearly comprehensive site for game lovers. If you want to know more about these games, or if a game you remember was not featured, I highly recommend it. You can also upload pictures and descriptions of games if your favorite is not on there.

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Another good article, NLogan. I still play Milles Bornes with some friends from time to time. Around 1979, a friend got me hooked on Waterworks, but I haven't seen the game since. A computer version of it would really be sweet.

Nintendo had a version of Waterworks called Pipe Dream. You had a few seconds to start building your pipe before the water started running. Same premise, you had to connect the pipe to the end. The bonus levels were like Tetris with pipe pieces falling vertically before the water turned on.

I never realized there were so many card games! What a cool thing to collect. Anyways, It's easy to call out the cartoon and movie spinoffs (He-Man, Star Wars, Muppets) But I loved that you included all the classic MB and PB games, too. I for one loved Mile Bourne as a kid, I had the version you listed as the original, holy crap wonder if that is laying around somewhere?! I also loved Pit and I at some point had both of those versions and now I have a pretty new version that also has a bell. Well done man. And screw Pokemon, you are right to say that did NOT belong in this fab article!

Another great article! Card games are still great fun, classics like UNO and Phase 10, Rack-o was another popular one in our house. Lunchtime in highschool was incomplete without a game of euchre, hearts or canasta.
I clearly remember getting that Dukes of Hazzard game from someone at my 7th birthday party and exclaiming out loud "But I HATE the Dukes of Hazzard!!" much to the horror of my mother! Wished I had gotten that Annie game instead, I guess...

I know I played Water Works and The Great Muppet Caper and for some reason the Mr. T game looks familiar too. Nice continuation of the series, being shorter it was a little easier to handle in one sitting.

Vkimo, my brother Nlogan left out pokimon because it came out slightly after our time, however our little brother over a decade younger got caught up in it. We dutifully bought him a folder and packs of cards even going to several burgerkings to get the unique pokimon cards they had as a promo. curiously he abandoned pokimon much like he abandoned barney when he was still very young, and refuses to acknowledge his involvement. Pokimon isnt really a card game in this sense per se as it wasnt purchased in a complete game set rather bought in packs actually more like trading cards like garbage pail kids or baseball. Magic the gathering and similar card "games" are really just trading cards with stats. Trading cards is a whole other article in itself with cards made for just about every movie etc.

Thanks guys.
Thanks Dalmatian.
Apology in advance to Guild_Navigator for not including Dragonmaster especially after I said I would and that it would be included here. I saved up the pictures and thought I had, I guess I was busy working on other things.

Holy crap that was thorough. I don't know where you even found pictures of some of those things. Funnily enough, I remember that He-Man war card game with the giant cards. I remember having that as a kid, although I never played it much. Funny how nearly everything was made into a card game back in the day. If they did that today kids would be bored out of their minds! Now days I guess everything is made into a video game, an app, a widget, a ringtone or MP3. Amazing. Never thought I'd say this with adults saying it to me when I was a kid, but kids today don't know how good they have things.